Overdale

Semi-detached two-bay three-storey red brick house, built c. 1900, facing south with a two-storey three-sided canted bay window to front elevation, and elaborate timber-framed entrance porch. Two-bay two-storey gabled return to rear shared with neighbouring house prolonged by lean-to. Pitched slate roof with red brick chimneystack to party walls with stringcourses and dog-tooth cornice. Replacement metal and cast-iron rainwater goods with original square-profile downpipes having trefoil clasp ties. Red brick walls laid in English garden wall bond with moulded red brick eaves throughout. Cement rendered rear and return elevations. Square-headed window openings with continuous limestone ashlar lintel courses, forming painted profiled lintels to eaves course at second floor level, red brick reveals, limestone sills with sill course to bays. uPVC windows throughout. Three-sided canted bay window to return with rendered apron. Front door porch, separated from neighbouring porch by panelled timber screen, with elaborate timber uprights supporting lean-to artificial tiled roof, with timber balustrade and open fretwork bargeboard and encaustic tile porch platform. Segmental-arched door opening with moulded red brick arch, reveals, and limestone threshold step. Tripartite timber doorcase with chamfered detailing, comprising sidelights over panelled timber bases, tripartite overlight, all with frosted and wired glass, and flat-panelled timber door leaf. Large front and rear site enclosed to front by rendered plinth wall supporting wrought-iron railings with end piers, to one side supporting wrought-iron pedestrian gate, all with cast-iron finials. Front site path to front door. Rendered and rubble limestone boundary walls to east enclosing front site from shared rear site access lane, which is closed by wrought-iron gates leading to car shelter to rear. Immediate rear site enclosed by rendered boundary wall with plank timber pedestrian gates. Large copper beech tree to front site.

This house forms one of two with a shared composition pairing a timber-framed front door porch. Like many late Victorian and Edwardian houses the design incorporates a multitude of architectural detailing. Very much intact though the loss of original sash windows is lamentable. Original door leaf, sidelights and overlight. This house forms part of the turn of the twentieth-century development of Landsdown Villas. The development, by Clifford Smith, is evidence of the middle class wealth in the City at the time.